Monday, October 26, 2009

Bird house at Gamone

At this time of the year, little birds start dropping in at Gamone. Their lovely French name, mésanges, is pronounced in the same way as the expression meaning "my angels". In English, unfortunately, they're called blue tits, which evokes—in my crude Aussie imagination—the predicament of a topless female who has been standing out in the icy cold. Since I rarely get close enough to such birds to take photos of them, I'm obliged to use images of blue tits that I found on the net:

Yesterday afternoon, the weather at Gamone was splendid. When my ex-neighbor Bob called in to pick up his mail, he was intrigued to find me crouched on the lawn, surrounded by power tools, building a bird house. I explained to him that these tiny birds make a great effort in flying over considerable distances to reach Gamone. So, it's normal that I should go to a little trouble to make their stay here as comfortable as possible. (I got the impression that Bob thought I had been drinking.) Here's the result, installed firmly on top of my rose pergola:

The central element of the bird house is a wooden drawer that was probably part of an ancient agricultural device at Gamone. The roof uses ancient tiles from the old police station at Grenoble, which were purchased long ago by Marcel Gauthier for the house at Gamone.

Notice that the rose bushes I planted recently have reached the top of the pergola... which still needs to be reinforced by cross bars at each of the four corners. As Bob said, when he found me building a bird house: "It would appear, William, that you've run out of things to do at Gamone." I hardly need to say that this is not the case.

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About Me

After working in various computing jobs, I retired to an old farm property in the Vercors mountain range, on the edge of the French Alps, where I spend my time writing, playing with the Internet and wandering around on the slopes with my dog Fitzroy, admiring wonders created by the Big Bang and Evolution.